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Text: Judges 7:2-8

Occasionally we have people who move here from Lexington and visit our church thinking we might have some similarities to Southland Christian Church in Lexington. But for those of you who are familiar with that church, I suspect that we have very little in common.

Southland Christian Church is one of the megachurches in Kentucky with a membership of over 7,000 people. I had a friend back in Arkansas who called such churches, "Six Flags Over Jesus!" Sometimes a church of that size is more like a large amusement park or convention center than it is like our small church.

There is a temptation to criticize a church that is so large, but I want to avoid doing that. I am confident that such churches provide life-changing ministries for many people. I suppose it is like criticizing Wal-Mart, which many people like to do. Some say they put small stores out of business; others say they don't pay good wages. But Wal-Mart is doing something right because their parking lot is always full. In the same way, the megachurches are doing something right or people would not go to them.

Instead of criticizing, I want to focus on the small church part of the comparison. When you put our church up against Southland Christian, it is easy for us to feel that we are so small that we can't compete. When their budgets are measured in the millions of dollars, their buildings in the thousands and thousands of square feet, and their numbers are measured by the thousands, our little church doesn't measure up to much.

Which is the better church? Which is the stronger church? Which is the more effective church? Which church would you want to belong to? Is bigger always better?

Many times, small churches get very discouraged. They feel that they are of little worth because they are little. Today I want to show you that God sometimes chooses to use little groups to show the power of God.

If you are on pace in our reading through the Bible in 2004, then you finished reading Judges and Ruth this week. During the period of the judges, Israel was led by these men and women who were political and military leaders. They led the Hebrew people in the early years after they returned to Canaan. They were chosen by God, and they were charismatic, spirit-anointed leaders.

There were good judges like Othniel and Deborah, bad judges like Abimelech, and several like Gideon and Samson who were a mixture of good and bad. Through them all, we find the cycle that seems to be repeated through the rest of Israel's history: They disobey, fall into despair, and then God sends a deliverer; and soon it happens all over again.

Today we will focus on Gideon's story because it has a wonderful message about who is really strong and who is really weak. And it is not always who we think it is.

The story is introduced in chapter six with these words, "The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years." Every year at harvest time, the Midianites invaded Canaan. They came with their camels and tents, took over the land, stripped it of all its produce and livestock and then left to return the next year. They were like a horde of locusts, the text says, devouring the land. The Hebrew people hid in caves to save their lives.

We find Gideon hiding in a winepress beating out his wheat so that the Midianites would not see him. A hiding warrior is not the most likely person to become the military leader of Israel. But the angel of the Lord says to him, "The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior." Gideon wasn't so sure the Lord WAS with him. He replied, "But sir, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?"

The angel of the Lord ignored his cowardly questioning and commissioned him to deliver his people from the Midianites. But Gideon was still not a willing warrior-leader. He replies, "But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family." I can almost hear him saying, "But my church is just a small church. Being small means that we are weak, and you just can't expect much from a small, weak church!"

The angel replies to Gideon, "But I will be with you, and you shall strike down the Midianites, every one of them."

Quite frankly, Gideon doesn't believe this message from the angel, so he asks for a sign. Then he goes home, gets some food items to give as an offering to the Lord before the angel. The angel touches the food with his staff, and fire sprang up from the rock, consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes; and the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight.

Then the Lord asked him to pull down the idol of Baal and the sacred pole of the goddess Asherah, Baal's consort, which his father had built. This was not a very good recommendation for his father, who had turned to worshipping the false gods. Verse 27 tells us that Gideon obeyed by pulling the idols over, "but because he was too afraid of his family and the townspeople to do it by day, he did it by night."

As the time of the battle grew near for the battle with the Midianites, Gideon got more and more unsure. So he asked the Lord for a sign. He put out a fleece, a piece of wooly sheep hide. If in the morning the fleece was wet with dew but the ground was dry, that would be a sign that God was indeed with him.

And it was so. The next morning the ground was dry but the fleece was so wet with dew that Gideon squeezed a bowl of water from it.

But Gideon was not satisfied. This miracle could have happened naturally: The ground's dew would evaporate more quickly than the wet wool. So he asked God to reverse the miracle: Let the ground be soaked with dew but keep the fleece dry! God obliged and the next morning the ground was wet and the fleece was dry.

Today, some people still try this tactic on God. They ask for a sign that they are doing what God wants them to do, and they sometimes call it "putting out a fleece." Sometimes God really does answer such requests, though in my experience, God's answers are so subtle that I am never quite positive.

But I suspect that Gideon's example is a negative one, not a positive one that we should emulate. Gideon's request shows him to be an insecure and unsure man who kept hesitating to do God's work by demanding yet another sign. In Matthew 12:39, Jesus says, "An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah."

So finally, Gideon brings his troops to the battle site. Gideon has 32,000 warriors going up against the Midianites who had 120,000 warriors. I am sure Gideon did not feel too secure with the odds against him at four to one.

But then God says something that Gideon never expected to hear: “The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, 'My own hand has delivered me'" (Judges 7:2).

So God told Gideon to go to the troops and say, "Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home." When Gideon made the announcement, 22,000 left for home, leaving Gideon with only 10,000 to face the Midianites. Now the odds were twelve to one.

God came again to Gideon and said: "You still have too many. Take them down to the water to drink and I will sift them out again."

When the soldiers began to drink, God said to Gideon: "Watch how they drink. Some will put their faces to the water and lap the water like dogs. Put them over there. The others will kneel and use their hands to bring water to their mouths, put them over here. "

The ones that lapped the water like dogs numbered 9,700, and the ones that knelt and used their hands numbered 300. Then God said, "I'll take the 300, send the 9,700 home."

This was not what Gideon had in mind! But God was making the point the victory would be God's, not Gideon's.

God then unveiled the battle plan. He is to divide the 300 into three groups of 100 and surround the Midianite camp. He is to give them each a trumpet, a torch and a clay jar. When night time comes, they were to light the torches and cover them with the jars so the light was hid.

Then at the signal, they would all blow their trumpets, break the jars revealing the torches and shout: "For Yahweh and Gideon!"

When they did that, the Midianites fled in fear and Yahweh and Gideon won the battle. It was a miraculous victory and Gideon became their hero.

Here we are confronted with the odd ways of God. In God's providence, huge numbers are not the deciding factor. In fact, God has a preference for things that are small and things that are weak. After all, Jesus changed the world with only twelve disciples.

The Apostle Paul was a weak ex-Pharisee with a thorn in the flesh. He proclaimed himself to be the greatest of sinners because he had persecuted the Church. He prayed repeatedly that God would deliver him from his thorn in the flesh, but God replied, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Isn't that amazing? God says that it is our weakness that lets us be useful to him. There is no doubt that God wants to use our strengths, but God also chooses to use our weaknesses to achieve his purposes in the world. Without our weaknesses we would never depend on God and let God's light shine through us.

Gordon Cosby once said that a pulpit committee ought to ask a prospective pastor this question: Are you weak enough to be pastor of this church? Are you weak enough to depend on God and let God's work be done in you?

And this truth not only applies to us, it also applies to churches. God can use the megachurch and does. There were times that Israel's armies overwhelmed their opponents with their numbers. But God chooses sometimes to use the small things, like small churches. Just because we are small, that does not mean that God is through with us.

In fact, I think God must have loved small churches because God made so many of them! When you put all the churches in America together, the average church size is one hundred in worship on Sunday. In fact, by our denominational standards, our church is considered a large church because we are over one hundred.

There is certainly a place for the megachurch; but there is also a place for the small church. God loved Gideon as much as God loved Saul and David.

The small church has to depend on God. We know that any success we have does not come from effective marketing, consumerism, or the fact that the church may resemble a shopping mall. When we see lives transformed and courage in the face of great difficulties, we know it is the power of God shown in spite of our weakness.

Perhaps small churches suffer from the Nazareth syndrome. In John 1, we find that Philip told his friend Nathanael about Jesus saying, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth." And Natanael replied, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

And we say, "Can anything good come out of a small church?" In small churches, we know each other too well. We are under no illusions that our members are perfect people because we have seen their foibles close at hand. We know the pastor is not some perfect person that we can put on a pedestal because we see him every day. We experience the frustrations of committees that don't function very well, people who are rude to one another, and complainers whose criticisms are more obvious that the compliments of those who like what's happening at the church.

Can anything good come out of the small church? No, not if all we have is the small church and our own strength. But if we really do have the power of God, the God who chooses the things that are weak in this world to show Divine strength, then we don't need 7,000 members for God to work among us. We don't need a megachurch in order to have value before God. Our small church can still be a mighty church. All we need are a handful of dedicated people, willing to be used by God.

Jesus changed the world with twelve disciples, he can still use our small church if we will only let him.